1. Before you start, know that diamonds can sometimes be found above ground in naturally generated chests. These chests can be found in villages or in abandoned mine shafts. Although it's possible to find diamonds without mining them, it's generally less successful. It's recommended to mine for diamonds if you want to collect them efficiently.
   
   
2. 
   2Make sure you have adequate supplies before you go diamond mining. Your mission is to get diamonds, but in order to realize that mission, you first need some supplies. Be prepared with the following when you dig underground to mine:
   
   
   
   
   • Lots of torches (more than 100)
     
     
   • An iron pickaxe, or a diamond pickaxe if you have one
     
     
   • Weapons and armor, in case there are mobs in caves
     
     
   
   
   
3. 
   3Know that diamond can be found in layers 1 to 16. Diamond distribution is reputedly highest between levels 8 and 13, with level 12 having the highest likelihood for containing diamond ore. Diamond ore blocks come in small veins of 1 to 10 blocks. There's a chance you could find more than 10 blocks close to one another if the random generation is kind to you.
   
   
4. 
   4Make a staircase that goes down. To make this, make a 3 block high hole, make the same hole that starts at the middle of the hole to one block below the lowest block of the original hole, and repeat. Keep doing this with a pickaxe, and it is advised that you come back every 10 minutes or so to get more food, store goods in chests, and make more picks and swords, etc.
   
   
   
   
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   5Once you reach bedrock, dig around and find the bottom-most layer. That is layer 0.
   
   
   
   
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   6Go up to layer 12 (1 block is 1 layer), and make a small room there. Make chests, a crafting table, and a furnace, so you do not have to go all the way above ground to craft more tools.
   
   
7. 
   7Start digging using a digging pattern. There are several digging patterns that you can use to efficiently mine for diamonds. Here are just some of them that have worked well for other players:
   • Make one main shaft that is 2 blocks tall and 1 block wide going in a straight direction for some while. Create small arms that start at the main shaft and appear every 5 blocks. Dig the arms in 2-tall, 2-wide blocks.
     
     
   • Go in a straight line in 3x3 chunks until you hit diamond ore.
     
     
   
   
   
8. 
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   If you can, try using a Fortune enchantment on your pickaxe while mining. Enchanting your pickaxe with a Fortune enchantment will increase the diamond drops you get while mining. There are three Fortune levels you can enchant your items with.
   
   
   
   
   • Level I gives you a 33% chance to multiply drops by 2 (a 33% increase on average), while level II gives you a 25% chance to multiply drops by 2 or 3 (yielding an average 75% increase), while level III gives you a 20% chance each to multiply drops by 2, 3 or 4 (averaging a 120% increase). Fortune level III enchantment is extremely rare, so be prepared to only get a Fortune I or II when you enchant your pickaxe.
     
     
   
   
   
9. 
   9Dig around a diamond block before mining it. Diamond ore is often around lava; when you mine them, there's a chance that the diamonds could accidentally fall into the lava, destroying them. Because diamonds are precious, it's best to make sure that they fall into your inventory, not the lava, when you mine them.
   
   

• Place wooden or stone blocks on top of the lava if you happen to encounter a lava lake beneath the diamond ore. That way, if the diamonds fall down, they won't be sucked up into the lava.
  

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